Lonely Gully: Chapter 10

Turns out Guyra has a society caterer and she’s prone to sampling the goods. But what does she know about mysterious sheep? Fiona Harari continues our summer novel with Chapter 10.

Fiona Harari writes Chapter 10 of The Australian's summer novel, Lonely Gully.

This is “summer reading” like nothing you’ve read before: a diverse field of writers united by their connection to Australia’s national newspaper, collaborating on a novel that will captivate you through summer.

Each author had just three days to write their chapter, with complete freedom over story and style; it’s fast, fun and very funny. Tune in over the summer to see how the story unfolds.

Today, Fiona Harari takes up our story.

-

By Fiona Harari

Mary had a little lamb – but by early afternoon on this exceedingly pleasant day she’s had way more red wine.

The lamb, a salted breast with warm celeriac strips and grilled cucumber sauce, is as good as Noma’s, although by Mary’s exacting standards this does not necessarily imply it is good enough.

The wine, on the other hand, is superlative. A something, something, blah, blah, blah, definitely red, and obviously pricey, but by this stage of the afternoon, nearly two bottles in, who knows what it’s called, and really, does it matter?

Mary California is Guyra’s grandest gourmand. With her signature California Rolls (confit of Petuna Ocean trout encased in compressed cucumber) and her bustling business, California Dreaming, for years she’s been what Sydney gossip columnists refer to as a society caterer.

To the hosts of Vaucluse and Point Piper, who more often than you’d imagine try to pass off Mary’s exquisite cooking as their own, she is indispensable. Booked solid for months for dinner parties, weddings and increasingly for toddler’s birthdays (she puts her foot down at any form of catering for canine parties) she is as intrinsic a part of eastern suburbs celebrations as the alcohol that will inevitably be her downfall.

Mary’s food oozes three things: love, flavour, and booze. Her re-imagined trifle, so artfully layered, comes with lashings of mascarpone and even more limoncello. Her retro brandied oranges could easily be renamed Orange Brandy. And because she insists on sampling everything that goes into her dishes, her $100,000 custom designed kitchen is littered with almost as many partly consumed bottles as the lemongrass candles she loves to light when she cooks, so that she risks losing her livelihood any time she lights a match (daily).

Most of Mary’s clients also love a bevvy (although not as much as they love cocaine) and are happy no matter how she turns up for work, or what she does there, until a party at the old Fairfax mansion a few years back where she mistook the crates of Dom Perignon in the butler’s pantry as the host’s uber generous thank you gift to her (rather than one bottle per guest) and drank an impressive chunk of it in situ.

When dessert failed to appear, some of the guests followed the hosts into the pantry where they found Mary face down in the oversized tiramisu that was to have been the centrepiece of the final course.

Not that anyone planned to eat dessert (carbs etc) but it was the principle of nicking from clients, even mistakenly. Mary was sent home in a cab, and the next day her bemused neighbour, a guest who had witnessed the scandal in the scullery called her.

Sawyer Matilda is a literary agent who previously turned Mary’s cuisine into a moderately successful cookbook. Now she was offering Mary the chance to skip town temporarily. She had an old family home, rarely used these days, at Guyra, beautifully renovated and lavishly furnished, with a cook’s kitchen and a small veggie garden, and Mary was welcome to bunker down there.

She did, and a few years on, she is still there, tending the garden, which she’s expanded massively, and offering to move into the guest room whenever Sawyer decides to pop by (once).

It’s been a long but very casual arrangement. With no talk of rent, there’s a tacit understanding that Mary can stay there gratis, in return for tending the property “and anything else that might come up” – which so far had equated to zilch.

And so Mary settles into Guyra, mostly alone at first, working the garden and creating ever more lavish feasts from her own produce. Eventually word spreads that a fancy cook from Sydney has moved in to the old Sawyer property and before you can say “Not spuds again” she’s been appointed judge of the region’s beloved annual Lamb and Potato Festival.

Mary actually hates lamb: the gamey taste and the fatty residue that coats the top of your mouth. But the judging comes with a moderate stipend, so she accepts.

It’s only a once a year effort, anyway, although she figures she’ll be served some pretty standard fare: passable pasties, chops and chips, maybe the odd gyros.

She does not, however, figure on the gourmet undercurrent swirling through the region, nor the intense competitive streak among locals, who inexplicably start dropping dishes at her door.

“Thought you might fancy a bit of this,” reads the card attached to the first Corning Ware casserole, which held a still steaming, spicy lamb tagine courtesy of Hollywood Mack. Turns out the local grocer, who once attempted to enter the Guinness Book of Records with the world’s loudest belch, is a pretty nifty cook.

Dramatis Personae

LIZARD ‘JEROME’ BLAIR: Handsome truckie, gun shearer and local favourite. Think a young Imran Khan.

DEB THORNBERRY: Lizard Blair's sweetheart and owner of Guyra's best tattoo.

HERBIE BONGMIRE: Guyra’s newest ABC cadet journo and the biggest shroom enthusiast in town.

TICK TOCK TAMMY: The reclusive station owner of Lonely Gully.

RANDY RACHELL: Local troublemaker, crook and former schoolmate of Lizard.

ANITA KUMAR: Molecular biologist and geneticist who grew up in Guyra.

MARY CALIFORNIA: Guyra’s grandest gourmand and judge of the Lamb & Potato Festival.

FURTLE BUREY: Guyra’s best sheep shearer and associate of Tick Tock Tammy.

BUTTON: A fierce-looking cop and suspected boyfriend of Randy Rachelle.

RICHARD ‘DEADEYE DICK’ BALDWIN: Guyra’s notorious glass-eyed sheep shearer.

SAWYER MATILDA: Sydney publishing agent working with Holden-Ford.

PAUL HOLDEN-FORD: Hot-shot publisher and owner of Ratfink Publishers.

RODNEY BLAIR: Guyra’s renaissance man and Lizard Blair’s father.

LYNDA BLAIR: Lizard’s mother, a Gamilaroi woman, who works as a cleaner at Guyra’s school.

DASHER LLOYD: Organiser of Guyra’s Christmas light competition and Lizard’s oldest mate.

XI JINGYE: Businessman and financier in cahoots with Tick Tock Tammy.

Next comes a knockout Irish stew from Dasher Lloyd, who owned the hardware store. “In case you’re hungry,” he writes in his almost illegible scrawl, a sentiment which actually makes Mary snort aloud with laughter. As if she’d ever go hungry.

It’s a few weeks out from her first festival by then, and the dishes keep coming: potatoes au gratin, a perfectly cooked rack of lamb, koftas, lamb shanks and an umami-heavy shepherds pie – and that’s just from Lynda Blair on one night.

Unexpected and probably unacceptable, it’s all surprisingly delicious. The standouts so far are Deb Thornberry’s lamb and potato pie, with its exquisite pastry, and Tammy Meadows’ exceedingly moreish lamb and rosemary hash.

But it has to stop. How much can one person eat after all? Not to mention how closely these food drops resemble not exactly bribes but certainly attempts to ahem, butter up the judge. (Although perhaps not as blatantly as one resident of Baldersleigh Road who feels compelled to actually drive over to Mary’s place and inform her that he’d named his two new puppies Baba and Spud in her honour.)

Finally, fed up and over fed, Mary plasters a huge poster over her front gate. “No more meals please!!!”

It works and they stop. She likes to think of that night as Guyra’s great silence of the lambs.

And then today, after a long, and if she’s entirely truthful, sad period during which she misses sampling the local cuisine, a plate is again left at her door.

This one is especially fancy, with a cloche but no name, only a brief note from the anonymous chef declaring this is his/her riff on Noma’s salted lamb dish – as if Mary needs reminding.

One bite in and she literally swoons, opens a bottle of whatever it was she’s been drinking ever since, and spends the next hour or two drooling over one of the finest dishes she has ever tasted.

Then her phone buzzes. She considers ignoring it to languish instead in her food coma, but a name flashes on to the screen. For the first time in months, Sawyer Matilda is calling.

Mid-mouthful and more than a little inebriated, Mary puts the phone to her ear. “Something’s come up,” says Sawyer. Mary’s stomach lurches. “I need you to go and see a farm.”

Fiona Harari writes for The Weekend Australian Magazine. She is a Walkley Award-winning journalist, the author of two nonfiction books and surprised herself at how easily she could make things up.

COMING UP: Literary legend Tom Keneally continues the story on Thursday, followed by Tim Douglas on Friday.

Read every chapter in the paper, on The Australian’s app and at lonelygully.com.au